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Suzi talks to writer Micah Sifry, who covers US & Middle East politics on his Substack newsletter The Connector, about whether he thinks a Harris presidency could change the dynamic of the Israel-US relationship, what it will mean for the war on Gaza, as well as Netanyahu's political survival. The withdrawal of Biden from the presidential race has upended what looked like a death march to a Trump/Vance victory. Netanyahu's dreadful speech to the joint session of Congress on July 24, boycotted by half the Democratic caucus in both houses, including VP Kamala Harris, highlights the opportunity she has to win back the votes of those who threatened to stay home unless the US stop funding Israel's wars — an opening that is particularly important in the swing state of Michigan. Micah Sifry untangles all these threads, which constitute what he sees as the black hole of foreign policy.Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
On June 25th, New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman lost his primary election to George Latimer, a longtime Democratic Westchester County politician. The race attracted national attention because of the unprecedented role played by the Israel-advocacy group AIPAC: The lobby's super PAC spent $14.5 million on television ads attacking Bowman, while AIPAC donors contributed about $2.5 million to Latimer's campaign. Bowman's loss marked a blow for the project of electing leftists to federal office, and the result particularly stung for the pro-Palestine movement; one of the most outspoken Democratic critics of Israel's war on Gaza will now be replaced by someone who won't even rebuke Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which puts him well to the right of Joe Biden. On this episode of On the Nose, senior reporter Alex Kane is joined by Intercept DC bureau chief Ryan Grim and former Justice Democrats spokesperson Waleed Shahid to discuss the meaning of Bowman's loss, AIPAC's electoral strategy, and the future of the movement to elect leftist Democrats.Articles Mentioned and Further Reading:“The Road Not Taken: Hard Truths about Jamaal Bowman's Loss,” Micah Sifry, The Connector“What the Left Can Learn From Jamaal Bowman's Loss,” Waleed Shahid, The Nation“A Trip to Israel Changed Jamaal Bowman's Worldview—And Could Cost Him His Re-election,” Calder McHugh, Politico
On this episode of See How They Run, Micah Sifry and Peter Beinart join D.D. Guttenplan for a discussion about 2024's most divisive congressional primary.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Michael Sifry returns to The Great Battlefield podcast to discuss an article he recently published called "Living with VANxiety: The Present and Future of Progressive Movement Tech".Additional InformationThe Democracy Group listener surveyThe Great Battlefield PodcastMore shows from The Democracy Group
Michael Sifry returns to The Great Battlefield podcast to discuss an article he recently published called "Living with VANxiety: The Present and Future of Progressive Movement Tech".
How will so-called "generative AI" tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT change our politics, and change the way we interact with our representatives in democratic government? This episode features three segments, with:Kadia Goba, a politics reporter at Semafor and author of a recent report on the AI Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives;Micah Sifry, an expert observer of the relationship between tech and politics and the author of The Connector, a Substack newsletter on democracy, organizing, movements and tech, where he recently wrote about ChatGPT and politics;Zach Graves, executive director of Lincoln Network, and Marci Harris, CEO and co-founder of PopVox.com, co-authors with Daniel Schuman at DemandProgress of a recent essay in Tech Policy Press on the risks and benefits of emerging AI tools in the legislative branch.
Organizer, The Connector journalist, and author of The Big Disconnect Micah Sifry helps us evaluate how directly we need to be involved in political activism to keep democracy sustainable.
As midterm frenzy reaches its peak, your inbox might be full of imploring fund-raising emails with increasingly desperate headlines: “Just $3 can make all the difference.” “Can you chip in today?” “Ultimately, it's up to you.” In theory, the small-dollar donation model is a good thing: It enables voters to have a say in who their candidates are and counterbalances the influence of superdonors and industry lobbyists. But as extremist candidates increasingly adopt grass-roots approaches and self-fund-raise their way into Congress, could small-dollar donations be doing more harm to our democracy than good?Today's guests come to the debate from different positions. Tim Miller is a former Republican strategist and current writer at large for The Bulwark who believes that there are real dangers to the grass-roots model. “Our online fund-raising system is not only enriching scam artists, clogging our inboxes and inflaming the electorate; it is also empowering our politics' most nefarious actors,” Miller wrote recently in a guest essay for Times Opinion. On the other side is Micah Sifry, a co-founder of Civic Hall and the writer of The Connector, a newsletter about democracy, organizing and tech. Sifry thinks that, yes, small-dollar donations fund extremists, but they can also enable progressive politicians to hold powerful interests accountable as independently funded candidates. “Some politicians are going to get money for their campaigns who I disagree with, but you've got to live with that because the alternative is oligarchy,” Sifry says.Mentioned in this episode:“The Most Toxic Politicians Are Dragging Us to Hell With Emails and Texts,” by Tim Miller in The New York Times“Fed Up With Democratic Emails? You're Not the Only One.” by Lara Putnam and Micah Sifry in The New York Times“Don't Blame Our Toxic Politics on Online Fund-raising,” by Micah Sifry in Medium(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)
The Connector journalist, activist, and author of The Big Disconnect Micah Sifry helps us find a better, healthier way to metabolize current events.
Andrew has been an advocate for digital literacy and equity from the very early days, focused on education, democracy & civic engagement. Episode Timeline 3:10 We all look the same... except for the glasses 6:20 How did it all begin? 8:10 Veteran's group had this old theater on Irving Place (...called "Irving Plaza") 11:05 By 1995 we were experimenting with streaming live music 12:55 I realized I needed to be involved with the community 16:10 I walked into this school and saw 3,000 kids and a single computer 17:20 Tech Glitch HOLD PLEASE 18:10 About 200 people showed up on a Saturday... That led to M.O.U.S.E. 23:00 The Record Industry blew it... they could have built iTunes or Spotify 26:25 The technology changes the art 28:10 ...and then the Bubble burst 29:50 I found it more an anthropological moment than a technological one 34:00 I started a conference call the Personal Democracy Forum 37:30 Politicians don't know the difference between a Server and a Waiter 43:00 Non-profits were starting to use these tools 45:15 Lightbulb: The NY Tech community is still highly empathetic 46:00 Micah Sifry and I Co-Founded Civic Hall together 52:05 The tech community is still way too white, way too privileged 59:20 Any chance we'll see you running for Mayor?
One promise of civ-gov tech is that it helps optimize democratic government, particularly in the cities where most people live. This panel explores how well that promise is being kept and how to improve things if it's not. SPEAKERSAmanda Brink is a Wisconsin-based political operative with over 12 years of experience in the field. A utility infielder, happy to assist with campaign management, overall strategy, fundraising, organizing, operations, compliance, digital, press, training, recounts, logistics, advance, and more. Former O.F.A., H.F.A., Tony for WI, Burns for W.I., Dems in Philly, D.N.C., WisDems, Raj for Madison, and more. Currently working for Organizing Empowerment, helping organizations put relationships back into organizing. Michelle Kobayashi M.S.P.H. is the Senior Vice President for Innovation for Polco/National Research Center. She began her career as a research analyst for the City of Boulder in 1989 and then helped to found National Research Center (N.R.C.) in 1995. Michelle has 30 years of experience conducting research, surveys, and policy studies for local, state, and federal government. She has authored numerous journal articles, book chapters, and books on research techniques and trained hundreds of government and non-profit workers on evaluation methods, survey research, and uses of data for community decisionmaking and performance measurement. Last year, N.R.C. and Polco, a tech company providing a digital engagement platform, merged, creating new opportunities for Michelle to modernize her survey work and the methods she uses to bring residents and stakeholders' voices into local governing. Micah L. Sifry is the Founder and President of Civic Hall, curator of the annual Personal Democracy Forum, and editor of Civicist, Civic Hall's news site. From 2006-16 he was a senior adviser to the Sunlight Foundation, which he helped found. Micah currently serves on the boards of Consumer Reports and the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science. He is the author or editor of nine books, most recently Civic Tech in the Global South (co-edited with Tiago Peixoto) (World Bank, 2017); A Lever and a Place to Stand: How Civic Tech Can Move the World (PDM Books, 2015), with Jessica McKenzie; The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn't Transformed Politics (Yet) (OR Books, 2014); and Wikileaks and the Age of the Transparency (OR Books, 2011). In 2012, Micah taught "The Politics of the Internet" as a visiting lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School. From 1997-2006, he worked closely with Public Campaign, a non-profit, non-partisan organization focused on comprehensive campaign finance reform, as its senior analyst. Before that, Micah was an editor and writer with The Nation magazine for thirteen years. He is the author of Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America(Routledge, 2002), co-author with Nancy Watzman of Is That a Politician in Your Pocket? Washington on $2 Million a Day (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), co-editor of Rebooting America, and co-editor of The Iraq War Reader (Touchstone, 2003) and The Gulf War Reader (Times Books, 1991). MODERATORJoel Rogers is the Sewell-Bascom Professor of Law, Political Science, Public Affairs, and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also directs COWS, a national resource and strategy center on high-road development that also operates the Mayors Innovation Project, State Smart Transportation Initiative (with Smart Growth America), and ProGov21. Rogers has written widely on party politics, democratic theory, and cities and urban regions. Along with many scholarly and popular articles, his books include The Hidden Election, On Democracy, Right Turn, Metro Futures, Associations and Democracy, Works Councils, Working Capital, What Workers Want, Cites at Work, and American Society: How It Really Works. Joel is an active citizen as well as an academic. He has worked with and advised many politicians and social movement leaders and has initiated and helped lead several progressive N.G.O.s (including the New Party [now the Working Families Party], EARN, W.R.T.P., Apollo Alliance [now part of the Blue Green Alliance], Emerald Cities Collaborative, State Innovation Exchange, and EPIC-N (Educational Partnership for Innovation in Communities Network). He is a contributing editor of The Nation and Boston Review, a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, and identified by Newsweek as one of the 100 living Americans most likely to shape U.S. politics and culture in the 21st century.
Much of the emotional power of a march or demonstration comes from being there. Successful labor organizing likewise depends in part on the intimacy and convenience of working near other people. Can you trust that your colleagues will risk their jobs for a strike when, as with many gig workers, you’ve never met? Is it logistically possible to organize when social distancing measures prevent you from gathering in person? On Episode 5 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene talk with Micah Sifry, author of The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics (Yet), about how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting political participation. Digital platforms can help us communicate—and even rally—but at what cost to our privacy, not to mention our enthusiasm? It’s hard to imagine a swarm of heart icons on a screen inspiring lasting political commitment. Who does virtual protest leave out, or leave cold? Later in the show, Josephine Livingstone and Alex Shephard, both staff writers at The New Republic, discuss what our entertainment choices during the lockdown can tell us about how we process a crisis. If top 10 lists are the measure, Contagion may be the ultimate pandemic movie … but there is a case to be made for Jaws. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Micah Sifry joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about his career in politics and tech and how Civic Hall is bringing progressive entrepreneurs and leaders together to share knowledge and solve public interest problems.
If independent podcasts are to prosper and survive in this era of growing commercialization, big media, and multi-million dollar podcast investments, we need to grow our community: Share, collaborate and promote groups, individuals and podcasters who share many of our goals.In this first "How Do We Fix It?" episode of 2020, we include recent interviews with leaders and supporters of Bridge Alliance, Civic Hall, Heterodox Academy, Solutions Journalism Network and Listen First Project. We support their efforts to strengthen democracy, boost curiosity, find constructive solutions and emphasize the positive.We've included clips from our 2019 interviews with Debilyn Molineaux, Arthur Brooks, Micah Sifry, Jodie Jackson and Pearce Godwin. As we celebrate collaboration and sharing, we also want to give a shout-out to three more vital groups that we will be working with in 2020: The McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University, Common Ground Committee, and New Books Network. All are working hard to promote the work of those who seek to make the world a better place.This week's recommendations from Jim and Richard...Book to read: "The Years That Matter Most" by Paul Tough.NiemanLab blog: "Podcasting Unsilences the Silent" by Joni Deutsch. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Social media is under fire for how it threatens our society, our politics, even our mental health.Facebook, Google, Twitter and other tech giants are criticized for spying on us and using secret algorithms to push us toward extreme views.Civic Hall is a key player in a growing movement to use technology to better the world-- what people are calling "civic tech".Our guest, Micah Sifry, co-founder and President of Civic Hall, is a longtime advocate for transparency, better government, and using tech for social change. "The problems that we face as a society are not going to be solved by tech alone," he says. Most of the problem-solving work that we see and support at Civic Hall is, at most, 20% tech and 80% social." In this episode we highlight the work of several groups, including Code For America, which is on a mission to make government work in the digital age, and Ushahidi, an organization that builds tools to solve the world's biggest humanitarian and international development challenges. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Social media created a new openness in political discourse - for a brief moment. How can governments, social media and democracy co-exist? Head to the website: nextbillionseconds.com
Team Human celebrates its 100th episode with this special “double feature,” recorded live before an audience at Civic Hall in Manhattan. Joining Douglas on the stage is writer, artist, and journalist Molly Crabapple. With just “compressed ash and wood pulp,” Molly brings to life images of injustice and makes visible that which is too often rendered invisible. Her paintings from Guantanamo, Istanbul, Syria, Puerto Rico, and recently immigration detention centers in Texas bear witness to the struggle of humans suffering under the oppression of empire. Molly explains how being an artist has afforded her unique access to these places otherwise closed off to cameras and reporters. “The best thing about being an artist who is a reporter is that you are constantly underestimated,” Molly explains. Molly and Douglas discuss both the subversive and connecting power of art in this thought-provoking Team Human conversation. Molly’s latest book is Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian Wara collaboration with Marwan Hisham. Molly also is the author of Drawing Blood.In part two of today’s show, Douglas welcomes Jace Clayton, aka DJ /rupture to the stage. Like Molly, Jace’s art has taken him across the globe, giving him a unique perspective on the powerful contribution of musicians to the living archive of history. Clayton looks at both the affordances of digital technology to spread music far and wide, while also critiquing those colonizing forces of globalized music that serve to flatten creative expression. In a chapter (excerpt) of his recent book, Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture, Jace offers a twisting narrative on the use of the ubiquitous pitch correction software Auto-Tune. It’s a story that not only reveals the embedded biases in technology, but poses both a media metaphor and question that Team Human must face in a digital society; “What is an individual voice nowadays when we are amplified and scattered digitally? We are obliterated. We too are products being traded.”Learn more about Jace and Molly’s work at their websites. http://www.jaceclayton.com/ https://mollycrabapple.com/This show features music from Jace Clayton DJ /rupture. You can stream or download over 8 hours of his music here: http://www.negrophonic.com/dj-rupture-mixes-free-download//His Sufi plugins are available here: http://www.beyond-digital.org/sufiplugins/Our live audience enjoyed the following video media: On Money Bail: https://mollycrabapple.com/animation/Molly’s Sketches from the trial of Jumaane Williams: https://mollycrabapple.com/drawings-from-the-trial-of-jumaane-williams/Vanity Fair Feature Inside Aleppo: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/07/inside-aleppo-syriaThis episode of Team Human was produced in collaboration with Civic Hall thanks to Micah Sifry (featured guest on TH Episode 36) and Savanna Badalich. Thanks to Luke Robert Mason for recording the show, Josh Chapdelaine for coordinating the event. You can support this show by becoming a subscriber via Drip and/or Patreon. Visit teamhuman.fm/support to sign up. Thanks as always to Dischord Records for allowing us the use of a sample of Fugazi’s Foreman’s Dog in the intro and to Mike Watt and R.U.Sirius. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Playing for Team Human is Micah Sifry. Next month Micah will host the 2017 Personal Democracy Forum. On today’s show, Micah and Douglas discuss how the stakes are higher than ever for bringing people into an active civic life and engagement with democracy. Looking beyond the 2016 electoral postmortems and whodunits, Micah and Douglas talk about the power of humans breathing together–conspiring–in real space and time, while also leveraging technologies of connection, to build an actionable progressive agenda. Listeners of Team Human will find kindred spirits at the Personal Democracy Forum and Civic Hall. If you voted and you've been marching and calling your representatives but are still looking for ways to enhance your civic power and find community, PDF 2017 is ready for you. Personal Democracy Forum 2017, themed What We Do Now, will be held June 8-9 at the NYU Skirball Center, NYC. Team Human will be recording on location at this year’s PDF. Also check out Team Human Ep. 07 recorded at last year’s PDF featuring Institute For the Future’s Marina Gorbis and Douglas Rushkoff’s PDF keynote speech.Also on today's show, a monologue from Rushkoff about why so many of us have to drive to work. (Hint: it’s not because the world was created that way.)A special thanks goes out to listeners who are supporting and sustaining Team Human. Visit Teamhuman.fm for more info. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
We all know by now that SOPA/PIPA — the Stop Online Piracy Act, and the Protect IP Act, respectively — died a sudden death in Congress in January. When online giants like Wikipedia and Tumblr went dark on January 18th of this year to protest the measures Congressional switchboards were overwhelmed with calls to just drop it. But how did a set of measures like SOPA/PIPA, otherwise unheard of and generally projected to pass into law quietly, get suddenly thrust into the limelight? Field producer Melissa Galvez brings us these excerpts from a panel at the Shorenstein Center on the Press and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where internet and/or politics experts Susan Crawford, Micah Sifry, Nicco Mele, and Elaine Kamarck discuss how the grassroots campaign to bring down SOPA/PIPA was built, and what it says about organizing on the internet.
This is part two of the New York City Jewish Tech Meetup that was held on Thursday, August 18th. The NYC Jewish Tech Meetup welcomed speaker Micah Sifry, the co-founder and Executive Editor of the Personal Democracy Forum and its blog TechPresident. He is a prolific author, most recently the author of WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency. In […]
This month, The NYC Jewish Tech Meetup welcomed speaker Micah Sifry. Micah is the co-founder and Executive Editor of the Personal Democracy Forum and its blog TechPresident. He is a prolific author, most recently the author of WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency. In this podcast, Sifry discusses the changes in “publishing” and the ways that technology have leveled the playing field of public communication. Syfry explores the societal affects of these changes, and discusses how this effects us all.
A talk show on KZSU-FM, Stanford, 90.1 FM, hosted by Center for Internet & Society Resident Fellow David S. Levine. The show includes guests and focuses on the intersection of technology and society. How is our world impacted by the great technological changes taking place? Each week, a different sphere is explored. This week, David interviews Prof. Michael Risch of Villanova University School of Law. For more information, please go to http://hearsayculture.com.
Bei TechPresident.com und dem Private Democracy Forum erforscht Micah Sifry, wie Technologie die Politik beeinflusst und wie politische Partizipation gefördert werden kann. Staatlich finanzierte Mitmachseiten, sagt er, sind Geldverschwendung.